I need somebody

7.2: "Beneath You"

7.4: "Help"

7.7: "Conversations with Dead People"

The title of the episode "Beneath You" certainly has many meanings.

Of course, for those of us who have not yet seen the remainder of the season we're still wondering what all that means (and although there WAS the earth-tunneling worm demon thing in "Beneath You," Anya's vengeance spell was clearly not worthy or permanent enough to be a lasting answer). Not only the phrase that is getting repeated throughout the season, "From beneath you, it devours," but it also brings to mind the line that Buffy said to Spike, like a re-echo of his past in "Fool for Love" from Season 5: "You're beneath me." This theme recurs faintly at the end of the episode, where Buffy finally realizes the nature of Spike's apparent transformation. (May I just say that the writers of Spike's lines in that scene are BRILLIANT. Of course, I'm a big fan of Spike's practically no matter what he does, pretty obviously I'm sure, but here, the perfect amount of everything that's barely being concealed under the surface comes across vividly with so few words, like a Tom Stoppard or Terence Rattigan play.)

Now we've even seen in "Conversations with Dead People," from Buffy's heart-to-heart with a former classmate turned vampire, that Buffy has both an "inferiority" AND a "superiority complex," so there again is a use of the phrase "beneath you."

The parts of the episode "Conversations with Dead People" about Dawn and her mom, Joyce, reminded me very strongly of the film Poltergeist (which I just got to see in Janterm—hooray for Film Music class!). But, of course, one big difference is instead of the mother trying to find the daughter and save her from the other spirits in the other dimension, Dawn is trying to save her mother from the evil demon (or whatever it was). Also, Joyce is definitely dead, unlike the little blonde girl. So, anyway, the action in those scenes just struck me as very reminiscent of Poltergeist.

The episode "Help" was, again, a revisitation of the lines between real and the unreal, usual and unusual. "I think you might be seeing PARAnormal where there's just normal," Willow tells Buffy, and this seems to be one of Buffy's many difficult challenges: how do you face that which is natural and inevitable, like her mother's death? When Joyce was experiencing her unexplained headaches and fainting spells in Season 5, Buffy was so convinced that someone was attacking her through her mother she put herself into a magical trance to trace the mysticism. However, when her mother finally died, it was something Buffy had no way of helping, no way of stopping. For an around-the-clock go-getter like a vampire slayer and a naturally compassionate person like Buffy, that particular fact of life will always be very difficult to accept.

Dawn states, "I guess sometimes you can't help," and Buffy asks, "So what then? What do you do when you know that? When you know that maybe . . . you can't help?" This is something that showed particularly strongly throughout Season 5, when not only Joyce died but the battle against Glory seemed to be inevitably one-sided. Buffy stood up for her sister despite all the complex issues surrounding her creation, despite the seeming invulnerability of her enemy and pointlessness of her efforts. The final scene of "Help," in which Buffy calmly returns to her desk at Sunnydale High to await other students, is how people—not only vampire slayers—really ought to respond to this question: you just keep trying. It's like picking back up after a loved one dies: life goes on, as against it as you as the bereaved may be. Buffy was made to care for and protect people, and in spite of all the horror that will doubtless be going down before the end of the season, she will keep going. That is her calling, her destiny.

[She shall be . . . the Energizer-Bunny Slayer! (My apologies to Anya . . .)]